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A row has broken out in the United States after allegations that NBC’s The Today Show airbrushed a photograph of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to make look more feminine.
Thomas, who is biologically male but identifies as female, was plunged into controversy last week when she won a National Collegiate Athletic Association swimming race ahead of biological women. She was the first openly transgender person to claim the national title.
Competing athletes cried foul and charged that she had an unfair advantage as a biological male competing against women. There have been calls for her to be stripped of her medal and for a review of athletic organisations’ protocols in such situations.
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Even International Association of Athletics Federations president Sebastian Coe has joined the fray, commenting that the development undermined “the integrity of women’s sport.”
Coe said:
According to the New York Post, the allegedly doctored image of Thomas ran on The Today Show and was posted to Twitter on March 17. The paper said that the manipulated photograph removed facial lines, skin discolourations, notable red impressions on her face caused by goggles, and blurred the Adam’s apple.
Commenting on the controversy former White House head of digital content Jonathan Gallegos said the doctored the “the edited image has definitely undergone some sort of softening and smoothing effect. “t’s clear this job was not done by a professional. This level of skin smoothing is a hallmark sign of an amateur job.”
Curtis Houck of the Media Research Centre charged that “in this day and age, news organizations should know better.
“My first reaction to this was it harkened back to CBS altering (late celebrity TV anchor) Katie Couric’s appearance so she appeared slimmed down or perhaps the most infamous and egregious example of Time magazine altering O.J. Simpson’s skin colour."
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